A bare selection of poems from 1951-1984:
"Aunt Jennifer's Tigers,"
"An Unsaid Word,"
"Living in Sin,"
"Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law,"
"A Marriage in the Sixties,"
"Prospective Immigrants Please Note,"
"'I Am in Danger--Sir--'"
"Orion,"
"Nightbreak,"
"Planetarium,"
"The Burning of Paper Instead of Children,"
"A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,"
"Trying to Talk with a Man,"
"Diving into the Wreck,"
"The Fact of a Doorframe,"
"From an Old House in America,"
"Yom Kippur 1984."

A selection of prose:
"Poetry and Experience,"
"When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,"
"Vesuvius at Home,"
"Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience,"
"Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity,"
"The Genesis of Yom Kippur 1984"

Mon, Apr 4 - Rich, all poems in The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected
Poems 1950-2001 from page 135 to the end (from The Dream of a
Common Language of 1978 to Fox of 2001)

Mon, Apr 11 - Rich, Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations
(entire book except for "When We Dead Awaken")

Mon, Apr 18 & Tues, Apr 19 - Adrienne Rich visits

Mon, Apr 25 - final session (with dinner) (reading day)

Papers and other requirements

Position papers

You will write a response to the readings every
week (well, you may skip just one). These are informal "position
papers." They are to be between 400 and
500 words in length and must be sent to the Fellows listserv any time
before 6 AM on the Monday morning of the week's class. Four of these
papers will be evaluated closely--at least one each on Angell,
Doctorow and
Rich. Each week, bring a printed copy of your position paper to class.
At the end of class you can decide if the paper you hold in your hands is
one of the four you will turn in for evaluation.

Listserv responses

Each week you will be responding to one of the
position papers sent to the listserv by your fellow Fellows seminarians.
Send your response before noon.
Your response should be sent to the listserv and should make a rejoinder to
one point in one paper. These responses should be one short paragraph in
length, about 100 words. Be sure, please, to make it clear which point in
which person's position paper is the one to which your response is
responding.

Projects

A special project will be randomly assigned to you. These,
too, should be sent to the listserv--any time before 6 AM on the date
indicate on the projects list above. Length: whatever is appropriate for
fulfilling the purpose of the project but no less than 750 words. These
need not be fancy or high-toned, but, rather, straightforward and lucid
and, if apt, organized into short titled sections to make for easy reading.
If you are not assigned a project, see Al asap so that we can devise one.

Obligations during Fellows' visits

As an absolutely vital part of
the Fellows seminar, you will be called upon to volunteer during the
two-day visits of the Fellows. Fulfilling this (mostly pleasurable)
function is as much a requirement as the others listed here. If
Phil Sandick has not asked you to take on a role during the visits, be sure
toask him what you can do to help.

Final exam

There will be a wildly comprehensive, personalized final
exam. It will be sent to you by email, to be written at your convenience
("take home") any time during the exam period.

Projects

Read Doctorow's Billy Bathgate. Summarize and generally analyze
the novel for us, and point out areas of relevance to our readings and
discussions of Doctorow.
Due Feb 14.
Alicia

Read Doctorow's World's Fair. Summarize and generally analyze
the novel for us, and point out areas of relevance to our readings and
discussions of Doctorow. Be sure to point out parallels between Doctorow's
and Angell's New York experience.
Due Feb 14.
Jill

Read Doctorow's Loon Lake. Summarize and generally analyze
the novel for us, and point out areas of relevance to our readings and
discussions of Doctorow.
Due Feb 20.
Yona

Read Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times. Summarize and generally
analyze the novel for us, and point out areas of relevance to our readings
and discussions of Doctorow.
Due Feb 14.
Jessy

Read Doctorow's Lives of the Poets. Summarize and generally
analyze the novel for us, and point out areas of relevance to our readings
and discussions of Doctorow.
Due Feb 20.
Kate

Doctorow has taught at NYU for many years. Find out (somehow) what he
teaches, what his affiliation is (what department and/or in what degree
program does he participate as faculty?) and what sort of impact he has had
on the program and the students.
Due Feb 28.
Jon Levin

Read not one but two books about the Rosenbergs and their trial. Give
us enough historical and political background so that even those among us
who don't know about the cold war, American communists, the social
connection between American Jews and radicalism, etc., will better under
Book of Daniel. Be sure to tell us what you now know about the
Rosenberg's sons.
Due Feb 20.
John

Using whatever sources you can muster, chart a history of literary and
intellectual responses to the Rosenbergs.
Due Feb 20.
Rachel

Read Angell's The Stone Arbor & Other Stories and tell us all
about it. Does the writing here in any way anticipate the masterful prose of
the baseball essays and recent memoirs?
Due Jan 31.
Jessica L.

Read Angell's book of satires, A Day in the Life of Roger Angell
and tell us all about it. Does the writing here in any way anticipate or
help explain the masterful prose of the baseball essays and recent memoirs?
Due Jan 31.
Jamie-Lee

Read E. B. White's Here Is New York with Roger Angell's
introduction. Describe the book. Tell us about the relationship between
Angell and his step-father (from what you can discern in this book and
elsewhere from Angell's comments in his own writing and in interviews). Be
sure to say what it is about New York that attracts (and repells) both
writers.
Due Jan 31.
Kerry G.

Read Angell's A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone and
tell us about it. Be sure to comment on Angell's management of the long form
(none of his other published work is book-length--all essays or stories).
Due Jan 24.
Ben

View all nine "volumes" of Ken Burns' documentary, Baseball.
What are its main themes, obsessions, forms? Tell us about it in a way that
specifically helps us understand what it means to say that Roger Angell is
writing about American culture and not just about baseball.
Due Jan 31.
Lindsey

Study Adrienne Rich's early writings (from the early and mid-1950s),
her own comments on it, and others' critical responses to it. Why was her
writing so formally (and to some extent, thematically) conservative then?
What accounts for the great change between her writing then and later? When
did the big change occur? Why? How does she account for it? How do critics
account for it?
Due Mar 28.
Nicole

Research and report on Adrienne Rich's general and specific connections
to feminist politics, to projects and activities and events of and in the
feminist movement.
Due Mar 28.
Meredith

Does the contemporary poetry avant-garde accept and embrace Adrienne
Rich as part of their aesthetic, part of their movement, important formally
and/or aesthetically and/or poetically to them? Interview (by email or in
person) contemporary poets, as many as possible: among them might be Charles
Bernstein, Jessica Lowenthal, Jena Osman, Bob Perelman, Kathy Lou Schultz,
Ron Silliman. As part of this report, investigate some of Rich's actions
regarding the idea of "American" Poetry, specifically her refusal of the
National Medal for the Arts and her controversial selections for Best
American Poetry a few years back.
Due April 4.
Elissa

Compare Rich's reading (interpretion of; version of; rendering of)
Emily Dickinson with the reading Dickinson is given by others. I leave it to
you to decide which other contemporary readings of Dickinson to use for this
study, but among them must be: Susan Howe (My Emily
Dickinson), Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert. Help us understand Rich's
own Dickinson by putting her "take" on Dickinson in context of others'.
Due Mar 28.
Janine

Do the absolute best that you can to tell us about Roger Angell's work
and importance and influence as fiction editor of the New Yorker.
This will not be easy, so take on this project only if you are (a) ready to
do some real digging on your own, and/or if (b) you are especially
interested in the contemporary fiction scene.
Due Jan 31.
Caroline

Doctorow has taken many strong political positions over the years.
Research this and tell us about them - and, where possible, report on the
reaction he has caused.
(He
wrote the foreword to Executing Justice, a book about the Mumia
case. Be sure to find this piece, among others.)
Due Feb 28.
Ariel

When Adrienne Rich was active in teaching at Stanford University, what
courses did she teach? What was her presence or impact there? Was she
involved in special projects? What did her students think of her? What did
her colleagues think of her?
Due April 11.
Ashley

Make an oral history of the Writers House Fellows program, from the
beginning until now. For several people. (See Al and Phil for details.)
Due April 25.
Richard & Kerry C.